Hmmm... another case of buy a full priced game, and then pay more to get more. Is your game only complete then if you buy the whole set? Should they be part of Daves review methodology?

Funny that Nintendo said no thank you to skylanders, now they are playing toy catch up. Unlike say Disney, with a fathoms deep well of disney, pixar, plus marvel plus star wars characters, what's Ninty got that you haven't played many times already? Rather be captain america than mario any day of the week and twice on sunday.

Plus, skylanders and disney infinity (and disney has quite engaging advertisements for marvel characters in infinity right now) work on WiiU, so Nintendo seems to fighting a successful third party developer on their console that might actually help sell WiiUs. Cant have that I guess.

Plus, the Amigos, excuse me, amoebas, nope...amigas...what was it...amiibos will be bound to the WiiU and 3DS line, and figurines are a burden to a portable.

Sounds like a real uphill battle to make these successful. At least I can look forward to conversations on how Nintendo does toy delivered extra content right.

Nintendo detailed Amiibo functionality in 3 of their games so far: Super Smash Bros., Hyrule Warriors, and Mario Kart 8. Apparently, they're going to make at least one Amiibo for every Smash character, or at least that's what I've heard.In Smash, you can scan in an Amiibo and get an AI controlled partner of sorts. You can fight your Amiibo one-on-one to train it. It levels up and gets stronger as it fights you and it also learns from you. For example, if you buy the Fox Amiibo and reflect attacks back at it, it will learn from that and get good at using Fox's projectile reflecting move. You can level them up to a maximum of level 50 and you can bring them into multiplayer battles with you to use as a tag-team partner. I think it's a pretty cool idea and I'll try it out whenever they release the Mega Man figure.In Hyrule Warriors, if you scan the Link Amiibo into the game you unlock a new weapon, the spinner item from Twilight Princess. I'll have to buy a Link figure because the spinner was my favorite item from Twilight Princess. Other figures will just give you random materials and rupees.In Mario Kart 8, you can scan Amiibos to unlock racing outfits for your Mii character that are based on whatever character you scan in. This one isn't very appealing to me personally, as I never use Miis when I have the option of using actual characters so I'll be ignoring this one.Nintendo also announced that Captain Toad Treasure Tracker will utilize Amiibos in some way but they didn't say how. I wasn't really excited for these until I learned how you use them in Smash. Now I think they're cool and have a lot of potential for other games. Even if they didn't wow me, I was still planning on getting them just to collect some Nintendo figurines.

The thing that will make these a success is that, unlike Skylanders and Infinity, they really don't need everyone to try to collect them all every year. See, Skylanders is a pretty decent game series apparently, with neat toys that find new ways to be neat every year (it should be noted, the main development version again this year was the Wii by the way, not Wii U, or another company, as Wii is amazingly still the bread and butter of the series).

With Amiibos, they work on games that are coming out with or without them. The "toy collector" market and rabid Nintendo fans will surely buy all if them. Me? I think I'll do what most gamers with a Nintendo system will do: I'll buy one that appeals to me because of the franchise, display it in my rec room (if I have one ) and use it if something cool is tied to it. So, for me, I'll buy Shulk from Xenoblade if that one comes out. He should work, at minimum, with Xenoblade Chronicles and Smash Bros, which will be nice.

You're not tied to a game here, so whenever one comes out that is for a game you like, you can pick just that one up and never care about any more. Also, if you think the Nintendo content in 3rd party Wii U games is something, wait until you see Nintendo start letting third parties make Amiibos. Yeah Capcom, you can sell Nemesis and we'll let you make it work with Revelations one on Wii U. Sure Namco, we can do a Polka that unlocks a download of Dig Dug in the eShop. Yeah Konami, we're adding Snake as DLC to Smash, we can do an Amiibo.

To me it seems to be copying Skylanders, a game I'm not interested in. It seems to be another way to milk us for more money, while cluttering our gaming environment with needless gadgets. Im sure whatever "special features" these action figures put in the game could have been done with out them. I wish Nintendo wouldn't do this, and I hope this doesn't become a new trend. However, it probably will, which will make gaming more expensive and take up unneeded space on the shelves.